I am wanting to make a small program that will help me out in saving time. The thing is that although I am an IT guy I do not know any type of programing, but I am willing to learn. I need to know what language would be best to learn for the type of program that I what to build.

The program that I would like to build would need to do...
1. work with txt files
2. text replacement (not the slow way like notepad) to a whole list of txt files
3. the user would be able to make "brake points" this is where the program would take the text that is in each "part" and make a new txt file for each

That is all I need the program to do. What language do you think I should try this in? Any information at all would be great! Also I would like to try to have an alpha version in around 6 months, so the easier the language to learn the better so long as it will let me code what I need to code.

Thanks for your time
Dcanup

altie

08-16-2007, 06:30 PM

Perl, Python, Ruby, Java - just about any scripting language will do what you need to do. It will work to your advantage to pick one up that's already common to your organization.

Regular expressions are the important language feature. They are a sort of sublanguage targeted at text processing. The same regular expression syntax is common to many languages, so the resources on this topic will often be separate from your chosen language. Get comfortable with the language basics first, then look up regexps.

dcanup

08-16-2007, 07:06 PM

I been doing some reading about different languages and I found out that Python is used often in "information security" and being that on monday I am starting school to get my major in IS I am thinking that is would be a great place to start.

So you think that just a scripting language is all I need to make this program? I though that Python was a high-end programing language, does that not mean that it is harder to pick up then an intermediary language?

altie

08-16-2007, 07:21 PM

It was probably even more a mistake to include Java in that list... I guess I didn't really mean scripting languages, more like ANY language. :)

Python's probably fine for a first language. I know people design pretty complicated solutions with it, so just don't be surprised if you run into existing non-tutorial code that makes no sense to your beginning self.

dcanup

08-16-2007, 07:41 PM

Yes, I know that java is not a scripting language it is a high-end object oriented language, and the big think about it is that it came be used on multiple OS's. I am not a total noob, I am well versed in HTML and CSS. I know the basics of Javascript and PHP, so that I can look at the code and know what is going on. I also know the very basics of C. I under stand the "if" "elseif" statements, loops, and some so the logic behind programing.

The only thing that I really programed thus far is a random dice roller where you would pick how many of what sided dice that you wanted to roll and it would give you the results.

Thanks for you time, I will look into Python.

oracleguy

08-16-2007, 07:47 PM

Yes, I know that java is not a scripting language it is a high-end object oriented language

The correct term would be high-level not high-end.

But in any event, I'd probably recommend using C#, Java or even VB if you want to rapidly build an application with a GUI.

Spookster

08-16-2007, 07:50 PM

You could do this quite easily with a unix/linux shell script assuming you have a unix/linux box to work with. Wouldn't require much programming to do so.

TheShaner

08-16-2007, 08:07 PM

I'd really suggest using Perl due to its superior text parsing and manipulation.

For the type of program you want to create, there's really no reason to learn Java, C, C++, VB, C#, or any other high-level language. I would stick to learning a scripting language due to your specialty, like Python, Perl, vbscript for Windows environments, or as Spook pointed out, shell scripting for Linux/Unix environments. Hell, you can even use PHP as a scripting language, hehe. There is no reason here to go above and beyond than what you need. Stick to what will actually be useful to you.

You're an IT specialist, so let designing complicated GUI programs be left for software developers. Go for the simple, quick scripts that will help you administer the servers and network to give you the most efficiency.

-Shane

dcanup

08-16-2007, 08:29 PM

I'd really suggest using Perl due to its superior text parsing and manipulation.

For the type of program you want to create, there's really no reason to learn Java, C, C++, VB, C#, or any other high-level language. I would stick to learning a scripting language due to your specialty, like Python, Perl, vbscript for Windows environments, or as Spook pointed out, shell scripting for Linux/Unix environments. Hell, you can even use PHP as a scripting language, hehe. There is no reason here to go above and beyond than what you need. Stick to what will actually be useful to you.

You're an IT specialist, so let designing complicated GUI programs be left for software developers. Go for the simple, quick scripts that will help you administer the servers and network to give you the most efficiency.

-Shane

PHP?...PHP would be ideal for me since I know the basics of that. I know that you could do the text replacing with PHP but would it be fast like in MS Word or would it be slower like in Notepad? Does PHP have the ablity to do the "brake point" idea that I had? The brake point idea that I had is really the main thing because I could just do the whole thing with a batch file if it was not for that idea.

Spookster

08-16-2007, 08:33 PM

You described "brake point" earlier as taking parts of text that is found and creating new text files from it. Yes you can do that with PHP.

dcanup

08-16-2007, 08:47 PM

Thanks for the information and advice...

TheShaner

08-16-2007, 09:19 PM

PHP allows you to run PHP scripts in command line form, so using PHP as a scripting language isn't all that uncommon.

Look into PHP's file I/O functions and look into preg_match, eregi, and string manipulation functions. All these functions of course can be found on php.net.

See what you can accomplish first and when you start hitting your first hurdles, come back here, post some code, tell us what you're hoping to achieve, and we'll get you on your way!